Ken Ferrie

A South Dakota farmer plans to use either a high-speed disk or a VT super coulter to ready the seedbed in fields this spring. He asks for help to know which tool to select for the job.

Ken Ferrie gives some practical tips on how you can rely more on facts and less on your gut to reduce management mistakes and achieve better cropping outcomes.

Planning for next season? Review the expert insights and recommendations from farmers and field agronomists on how to reduce costs and strategically reallocate resources.

Several years of low commodity prices, high input costs and thin margins have taken a toll on soil stewardship in some parts of the country. As a result, farmers need to use caution and do their homework before renting ground that’s coming available in their area for 2026.

Farmers wanting to hang onto the soil moisture in their fields are struggling to address compaction and ruts where there has been little to no recent rainfall. Anhydrous ammonia applications are also difficult to get sealed in fields where moisture is minimal.

The new technology is being evaluated in Farm Journal Test Plots this fall and catching a lot of farmer interest in the process. Check out our brief video showing the system at work in a central Illinois cornfield.

It’s a head-scratcher situation: some Illinois farmers are reporting moisture levels in their corn are dropping only one point per week.

The Midwest crop is being pushed into black layer (R6) prematurely in some areas in ways that are easy to confuse with normal drydown factors.

The disease is causing turmoil for farmers who have a large crop in the making. In some cases, a Hail Mary fungicide application at R4 up to early dent (R5) might make sense this season, say agronomists.

With at least four weeks left in the growing season, Ferrie encourages farmers to stay ahead of heavy disease pressure in fields, particularly in what he calls D hybrids — those that punch their yield card late-season.